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Hospital Employee Marks 50 Years with Intermountain Healthcare

In the same year that To Kill a Mockingbird was first published and the largest earthquake ever recorded rocked the regions of Chile, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center’s own Brenda Young began working for the organization that is now Intermountain Healthcare. Young marked 50 years with Intermountain on September 26.

After a short time at Brigham Young University, Young transferred to LDS Hospital where she backed up Accounts Payable and worked in Payroll. In December of 1969, she transferred to Utah Valley Regional to work again in Accounts Payable and Payroll as the secretary to the controller and has been in that department ever since.

When Young started working at Utah Valley Regional, the 650 employees used a time card system. Employees had to punch their time cards and their managers had to add up the totals and verify the numbers. Young says the introduction of a computerized system allowed for less human error and made rounding more consistent. Today, nearly 4,400 employees in Intermountain’s Urban South Region (Utah County) continue using an automated system.

“We’ve come a long way,” Young says. “Intermountain has moved with the times as far as technology and things we’ve been able to do. We’ve got a good system.”

Before the computers, doing payroll was quite an operation. Young used to enter data on payroll Monday from 7 a.m. to 10 or 11 at night. She would come back in on Tuesday in order to hurry and finish before noon. Now, Young is done before 2 p.m. on payroll Monday.

When Intermountain Healthcare was formed, Young says not much changed. “We saw very little difference,” Young says. “I’m sure there was a lot of change on how things were run, but we didn’t see much change. Pretty much everyone stayed in place.”

Young received the Employee of the Year in the late 1980s. During her time at Utah Valley Regional, Young has moved offices seven times and has had eight different bosses.

“The best part of the whole thing is the people,” Young says. “You make a lot of friends over the years. It’s hard to see them go.”

Along with doing payroll for half of a century, Young loves to read and is an avid BYU football fan. She has had season tickets to their games every year since the mid-1960s. She has had several church assignments, including working with the Cub Scouts. She also loves rocks and is a recreational organist—which she says has brought a lot of enjoyment and stress relief to her life.

“It’s not been an exciting life, but it’s been a fun one,” Young says. “It’s been a good job. I wouldn’t have asked for anything nicer.”